Creating a first prop motion

Sporting activities of the youth of today have been on a steep decline as children are diverting their time to technical means of leisure due to their lack of motivation to be involved in physical activity when they have an immediate source of entertainment at the comfort of their home. This leads to children being unhealthy which obviously leads to many health risk such as diabetes and heart diseases. That's why this house believes that "Children should be forced to do sports" as this will be the only way to increase the amount of sports done and healthiness of children.

Small vs big Government

Small vs Big government is a principle often used in debates. 

The small government is where the government tries to remain passive meaning that the citizens have more freedom to their life. This however also means that the society could also be more dangerous as people are more free to do any actions they want. Also often referred to as anarchy.

The big government is where the government tries to remain in total control on the society meaning that the citizens get less freedom to their life. This however could also lead to the society being a safer place as it will be more regulated and controlled. However the citizens will have less choices of actions. Often referred to as Dictatorship.

These two opposing ideas often clash in debating and could be a very useful concept as they are used in the context of freedom vs security where freedom represents small government and security represents big government. 

Rebuttals

There are 5 key areas to look at when rebutting. Similar to making an argument, when you rebut you will need to pay particular attention to certain areas that they are talking about which are:

-Reason

-Explain

-Example

-Importance 

-Link to motion

Using an example of This house will ban smoking

If the five points were

-Reason.             Effect on others health

-Explain.              When they smoke you will breath it in 

-Example.            Health warnings 

-Importance         Children are particularly sensitive and easily affected 

-Link to motion.    The harm that smoking causes should lead it to be banned

In this example of an argument each area could be rebutted for example 

-Explain             People have designated areas to smoke 

-Example.          Health warnings does not equal banning

-Importance       It is the parents duty to protect them

An other important part of rebuttals is to notice the soundness or impact of the argument. Usually when the reason, explanation and example are quite sound, doesn't mean that there isn't any errors in it just like the argument above which clearly has a lot of flaws.

The second part is the importance and link to motion having an impact on the audience. If the like importance of the argument does not matter or impact the audience you could simply ask the speaker "why should we care". For example if an importance of an argument would be "millions of chickens are killed daily so we can eat kfc" you should simply ask " why should we care that chickens are getting killed everyday, chickens die everyday anyways, the fact that we are eating them just makes them more useful in the survival of humans".

Utilitarian vs deontology

Utilitarian:  favouring the greater good over ethics 

A ultilitarian tries to produce th greatest good for the great number. For example the bombing of Hiroshima had saved a greater number of people by causing harm to the people in Japan although they are still causing harm to innocent people in Japan, they are sacrificing their ethics for the greater good.

Deontology: Favouring the more ethical choice

Deontology favours morals over anything. For example during the bombing of Hiroshima, a deontologist would be against the action of causing harm on innocents no matter how big of a greater good it will have.

During our debates there were different examples of utilitarian vs utilitarian as well as ultilitarian vs deontology etc. For my debate we had an example of utilitarian vs utilitarian, our topic was whether organ trade should be legalised. Both teams talks about utilitarianism and how it will benefit for the greater good.